The Liverpool & Manchester Railway was Britain's first mainline, inter-city railway; opened in 1830 it was at the cutting edge of railway technology. Engineered by George Stephenson and his team - John Dixon, William Allcard, Joseph Locke - the project faced many obstacles both before and after opening, including local opposition and the choice of motive power, resulting in the Rainhill Trials of 1829.

Much of the success of the line can be attributed to the excellence of its engineering but also its fleet of pioneering locomotives built by Robert Stephenson & Co. of Newcastle. This is the story of those locomotives, and the men who worked on them, at a time when the locomotive was still in its infancy.

Using extensive archival research, coupled with lessons learned from operating early replica locomotives such as Rocket and Planet, Anthony Dawson explores how the locomotive rapidly developed in response to the demands of the first inter-city railway, and some of the technological dead ends along the way.